Complex services such as purchasing a vehicle have long gone digital to keep up with consumers’ demand for convenience and efficiency. But simply operating as an online business isn’t enough to compete in today’s digital market––in order to thrive, organizations must evolve their digital services as both consumer and business priorities evolve. For example, automotive companies today are gearing up to provide in-car software that could teach drivers how to operate their vehicle off-road or even provide entertainment suggestions.
The success of new digital strategies in any industry hinges on a cloud-native approach to software development, according to recent research from Gartner. Deployments from companies that don’t go cloud-native will soon be considered legacy: Gartner predicts more than 85% of organizations will have a cloud-first ethos by 2025, and 95% of new digital workloads will operate on cloud-native platforms (a 30% jump from 2021).
Millions of developers leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS), the leading cloud services platform on the market, to drive this shift. AWS offers 200 different cloud-based products, including several integrations developed with other top tech partners like Atlassian. By shifting traditional software development processes to be cloud-native and adopting AWS, companies can continue to merge business and IT, and bring quality innovations to market with speed and at scale.
What is Cloud-Native and What are the Benefits?
Cloud-native is a term to describe several modern tools and techniques that developers use to build and deploy applications on public, private or hybrid clouds as opposed to on-premise data centers.
These four methods make up the following core cloud-native architecture principles:
- Using DevOps to create a culture where building, testing and deploying software is done quickly and consistently.
- Instilling continuous delivery powered by automation to release risk-averse software frequently and allow developers to receive regular feedback.
- Leveraging containers as a compute vehicle to deploy applications using microservices, which develop, upgrade and scale applications automatically in small batches for minimal impact.
- Ensuring advanced security protocols by repairing vulnerabilities quickly, repaving servers and applications and rotating user credentials.
Going cloud-native ultimately enables teams to output frequent, quality releases with agility. And because cloud-native applications are built and deployed on a platform that’s both flexible and scalable, teams can quickly respond to customer changes and continue offering their services while making application improvements—unlike the limitations of a legacy infrastructure.
Unlocking the Capabilities of AWS
AWS has a host of services to produce cloud-native applications, and it is the top-rated provider for cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS). AWS has earned these marks for the strength of its global infrastructure and its range of serverless computing, storage and database solutions. AWS features more services than any other cloud provider starting from standard compute, storage and database technologies, to emerging tech like machine learning and artificial intelligence. Combined, these services help organizations move faster during development cycles.
While the gamut of services AWS offers supports a wide array of organizations, from large enterprises to budding startups, solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all. Companies can choose any combination of operating system, programming language or web application based on their unique business needs, which helps to keep learning curves at bay and allows developers to focus on building innovative solutions. Any organization can go cloud-native with AWS, even those within highly regulated industries, thanks to robust compliance controls. AWS supports security standards required for healthcare, financial services, government agencies and more industries, so teams can develop innovative digital services knowing their data is secure.
Additionally, outside technology providers such as Atlassian have built integrations in partnership with AWS for benefits that elevate DevOps workflows. Teams can improve the way dev and IT professionals interact by using Atlassian’s Jira Service Management integration with AWS Service Catalog. Bitbucket AWS integrations enable easy provisioning and deployment of continuous integration pipelines. And Opsgenie AWS integrations ensure IT engineers and DevOps teams can find and resolve problems quickly with alerting security and automation capabilities.
Ensuring a Successful Implementation with Expert Support
With AWS’ services, teams are equipped to operate with a reliable infrastructure and the right tools to build and deploy software releases. While AWS provides top-of-the-line, widely adopted technology, partnering with an AWS managed services provider like Contegix can help teams vet, select and implement what they need to become cloud-native.
However, the sheer amount of solutions available to organizations from AWS can be overwhelming for any organization, especially for those that are new to the cloud or haven’t yet adopted DevOps.
Contegix offers a fully managed Atlassian environment on AWS, helping organizations get started with the required technology and systems to follow the core cloud-native architecture principles. Atlassian experts at Contegix can also give teams hands-on guidance about how to use these tools, and where they can optimize their platform based on their organization's unique needs. Ongoing support from Contegix can help teams troubleshoot issues and fill security gaps.
Get more information about how Contegix can help guide your cloud-native adoption with AWS here.